“Stay, Go (Go, Stay)”

As L’Rain, the New York-based artist Taja Cheek makes experimental R&B that gets intimate with the listener. Fusing together jazzy instrumentation with tape hiss and snippets from her voicemails, her songs have a diaristic composition and explore a vast array of feelings. “Stay, Go (Go, Stay),” from L’Rain’s debut self-titled album, tries to capture her conflicting feelings about the death of a loved one.

From the start, the track sets a comforting tone, as Cheek sings a few sunny lines from Bobby Caldwell’s “Open Your Eyes.” Right beneath her vocal, she unspools a recording of a caretaker helping a person exit a vehicle, patiently imploring them to slowly lift their limbs out of a car. Shortly after, the song blooms as her syncopated vocals float slowly over a plush backdrop of synth and guitar. She laments a recent loss, wondering, “If heaven comes for you/Then who’s there beside me?” and saxophone bursts soulfully across the track. Ultimately though, there is no emotional resolution; Cheek repeats the titular phrase and a chorus of sped-up vocal samples and warped noise cap the track with a disorienting note. In this way, Cheek makes grieving feel real on “Stay, Go (Go, Stay).”